Ryan Adams

“Collaboration has become really integral to my process. I play music so that I can spend time with my friends and communicate in that way. I experience so much joy in that process, because, you know, it's those times of getting together and playing music and all that comes with it that are the best for me.”

“Man, I loved The Smiths so much. I thought they looked awesome, and Morrissey had hearing aids like my Papaw.”

“There is this strange fog of being a young man that I would refer to as soft time. Time does not go forward there. It's a series of doors that kind of wind back into one another, like a series of doors in the upper floor of a house. You revisit the same lessons over and over again, or you choose to ignore them.”

“When I started, the music I would be drawn to would be heavy metal and new wave like Black Sabbath - things that seemed more shocking - and then, of course, eventually I would find bands and writers who were laying things out very clearly and whose words felt very sharp to the touch and sharp to your feelings.”

“When I start working on a batch of tunes - like roughly 10 solid tunes - I always know there'll be another 10 to follow, because for every song I invest a lot of time in, there's another song waiting behind it.”

“'Prisoner' is not a direct 'I've just been divorced' album, although that fire is burning very well on the record.”

“I'm hyper-focused on loss. But I know it's just the impermanence of being here.”

“I can sing the saddest song with a bunch of people, and the feeling of sharing that energy activates in a way that either heals it or makes me feel like I've risen a thousand miles above it into space, and I'm staring down on it as a little dot.”

“I routinely never discuss my marriage. It's nice to have things in my life that are totally mine.”

“Part of the joy of music is listening to lots of different kinds of music and learning from it. Specifically for me, I like writing songs that move me, and what moves me are beautiful songs on the piano or the guitar and really, really heavy music.”

“There definitely isn't a structure anymore to how I get ideas. A lot of times I'll just write down a phrase, or I'll have an idea that's attached to just a few chords. Other times, it's work.”

“My intentions have been, and are always, to just really get behind what my ideas are musically and to just ride this thing out, cause it feels good, and I think for the most part it's good music. Even when it's not, I'd like to still search for something that could be even like a little bit mind-blowing or shocking to me.”

“I cannot say that I know a lot about scales, but I can write songs.”

“To make a song is a gift, and once it's done it keeps evolving and changing and becomes a tool to interact with other people. It's like a conversation.”

“I was an earnest young man who just wanted to make music.”

“In the three years that nobody heard music from me, I made more music than I've ever made.”

“For me, the best thing you can do as a man in loving someone is to do your best, go on that walk, and at the end of that walk be as much of a gentleman as you were in the beginning.”

“Ultimately, however bad a situation is for people, especially if it's a condition of love or some internal dialogue, I think most people would agree that when you look back on it, those times are well remembered.”

“Music is my thing. It's my thing; it's what I love. It's what I do. It's football to me; it's Christmas to me; religion to me; poetry to me.”

“Fame is an unnatural construct and those who go in search of it are the least likely to find it.”